THUNDER BAY – A member of the nation’s Senate insists a Thunder Bay high school clearly demonstrates the need for the federal government to properly fund First Nations education and invest in young people.
Sen. Kim Pate, who sits on the Red Chamber’s Aboriginal People’s Committee, was in Thunder Bay on Thursday where she toured and met with students and staff at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School.
While Pate described the federally funded school for students from remote First Nations communities as an “amazing school producing amazing Indigenous leaders,” she said it is not adequately funded compared to provincial schools and called on the government to do more.
“We should be investing early and ensuring people are living in healthy, safe communities and not waiting until its crises and trying to fix situations after the fact. This is an excellent example of how we can do that – if this school had a residence, if there were more opportunities for people to come and do distance education as well,” Pate said.
“I can see all kinds of tremendous potential in terms of not just what the school is already doing – which is amazing – but also much more they can be contributing to Indigenous leadership.”
Building a student residence for the high school was one of 145 recommendations produced from a coroner’s inquest that examined the deaths of seven Indigenous youth between 2000 and 2011, with six of those youth being students at Dennis Franklin Cromarty High School.
Shawnda Mamakwa, a Grade 12 student from Kingfisher Lake First Nation, helped show the senator around her school and agreed that a residence is needed.
“I think it would be much better if everyone lives together,” she said.
“I think we do need a residence so all of us can live together in one building instead of transporting here to school, waking up early just to catch the bus just to have a half hour ride to get to school,” she said. “It does get hard to try to meet up with each other to get together because they’re like 40 minutes away on a bus ride.”
Pate called the increasing reliance to have education funded by private donors a “travesty” and said she wish she was surprised that the federal government has followed through on many of the inquest recommendations.
Safety of Indigenous youth again emerged last year as a major issue in Thunder Bay after the deaths of teens Tammy Keeash and Josiah Begg prompted an emergency Nishnawbe Aski Nation chiefs’ meeting where not allowing students to come to Thunder Bay was discussed.
“The really horrible reality is some of the media attention that’s been brought to not just the inquest but the racism in this community has meant, I just heard, some of the communities are refusing to send children here to the school and understandably,” Pate said.
Pate made the stop in Thunder Bay while controversy continues to swirl around embattled Sen. Lynn Beyak as calls mount for the Red Chamber’s Northwestern Ontario representative to resign for adamantly defending what she referred to as the positives of residential schools and other inflammatory comments about Indigenous people.
When asked about whether Beyak should keep her spot in the Senate, Pate said she might have been open to it if her colleague had taken steps to “take responsibility for the mistakes she’s made.”
“If there had been a retreat from that and an acknowledgement of the problems with what she was saying, then yes, but I think it’s time for her to go and anybody who feels those ways is really not representing the most vulnerable in our country and not representing the most marginalized, and that’s part of our job,” Pate said.
